How to change the behavior of Salesforce users (without punishing them)

"What looks like a people problem, is often a situation problem. And no matter what your role is, you've got some control over the situation."

- Chip Heath, Dan Heath (from the book Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard)

If your Salesforce users aren't doing what you want them to do, it may be because they are stubborn jerks who hate change and refuse to follow orders.

Or, it might be that their environment doesn't make using Salesforce very easy - so they follow the path of least resistance (which is often the incorrect path).

Here's a video that discusses a principle you can follow to change your Salesforce users' behavior, and an example of one application of the principle.

 Making a job aid

Making a great job aid is one way of smoothing the path, and changing your environment to make doing the right thing easier. Here are 6 basic steps for making  one:

Make users productive right away

If your users leave your training without being able to instantly do something when they sit down at their computer, you may want to think about modifying your approach. Here's an example of using the right kind of information to help novices be productive right away.

 Change your environment, change behavior

The principle is this - tweak your environment so that the behavior you want to see more of, is easier to do. If you want your users to enter more data into Salesforce, make it easier.

One way to do this is to make job aids that show your users exactly what to do. If a new process is a mystery, and finding out how to do it is a huge chore, your users won't do it.

What are some other ideas you have for tweaking your environment to change behavior? Leave some of your ideas in the comments.